Yes, we did - on May sixth, which also marks our one year anniversary of our departure from Marin County, Fairfax, Good Earth parking lot, Java Hut and our bestest friends....sigh..........
Anyhow - yes, good, we decided to take the newly paved road along the old railroad and the river Mira heading north west back to the Pacific Ocean. Darn, we haven't seen that ocean in such a long time...
We left the traffic and the big diesel trucks with the PAH (PanAmerican Highway) and the road was ours.
The country side can be described as moonlike at times. The road snakes itself along the steep mountain side. We are riding through a river gorge. Some times the wild waters were visible from way above and some times it was roaring right next to us. So beautiful and never boring. Crossing the old, dead railroad track numerous times...wondering how and who and what it was like when people were using it way back in time. This newly paved road lends me to believe that the whole road must have been cut anew because the steep sides of the mountains were highly unstable and big land slides had covered the road with rocks at times, were cleared out and had obviously carved the pavement. One slide - more like a rock avalanche had come down minutes before we emerged and traffic had stopped on both sides. Some small rocks were still tumbling down and it was a guessing game if some more bigger boulders would follow. Some brave humans were in the road clearing some of it by hand, some cars and small trucks just went for it and blasted through the rocky mess. Everybody else waiting wanted to get past that dangerous section as fast as possible. James and I got off our bikes and walked, because we wanted to make sure to watch the loose mountain side and hopefully being able to dodge any rocks coming down on us (fat chance....but we were lucky again!)
After that and back on our bikes we still climbed a lot - up and down and up and down, but generally down. Some sections were super steep though and I was thinking: What the hell.....I thought we are descending now...
Half a day of riding after the turn off still left us over 1500m until it was time to spend the night in a Pension. (the only one we saw - shit we were lucky...) Our tent and some stuff was still damp if not outright wet from the night before (in the cow field, remember?). Clean room, big old fan and lots of good food, beautiful, smiling people around us....what else do we need?
